Monday, November 28, 2011

I’d like to briefly pass along two interesting articles and one video that have struck me recently, and should you find the time today for a quick dose of reality, I highly recommend them.

The first is from Ross DeVol of the Milken Institute The Eight Best Innovation Ideas From Around the World. [Very inspiring! --JAH] Now, while it’s hard for me to support state-sponsored anything, DeVol does a great job of underscoring one of our primary points in this publication– countries around the world are starting to offer huge incentives and COMPETE for the best talent, labor, and capital.

From Singapore to Finland to Switzerland to South Korea, DeVol breaks down just a few of the places in the world that have made key policy changes to attract foreign businesses, professionals, and investment.

The second is a short article profiling Chinese professor and TV host Larry Lang’s recent comments during a lecture he gave in mainland China. In Lang’s words, the Chinese government is on the brink of bankruptcy, and that “every province is Greece.” [Disturbing! --JAH]

We’ve been beating this drum for quite some time, and if just a fraction of what Lang is saying pans out, the implications to the global economy will be severe. It makes me happy to be in Chile at the moment, working hard on our resilient community.

It’s just another example of the political class criminally enriching themselves at the expense of the taxpayers. [Fascinating to watch political "leaders" scramble like cockroaches out of the limelight! --JAH]

And, of course, let's not ignore the U.S. Congress and its own insider-trading scandals--all "perfectly legal" (for them; just not for anyone else). You know, regular citizens get thrown in prison, for years, for far less obvious infractions than these "ladies and gentlemen" engage in. But who are we to question?

"We tested a crowd-sourcing Web site in Asia in a difficult-to-access language group, and over 1,000 mother-tongue translators came to the Webpage and participated in this pilot project to help translate chapters of the Book of Luke into their heart language," says The Seed Company president, Roy Peterson. . . .

The Seed Company crowd-sourcing site had 1,000 people translating verses of Scripture, but there actually may have been many more participants. The Seed Company took a trip to the small Asian village where the pilot project took place. The village was peppered with small, dirt-floor homes, and the ministry discovered that those doing the translation were typically young people in their early 20s. The translators would head to an internet café to work, but not alone. Much of the time, they had their entire families with them, adding their input as well.

Participants were also able to give feedback on other verses that people had translated and put up, able to compliment them on a job well done or encourage revision. . . .

"Think back 50 years ago when there was one missionary, all by himself or all by herself, translating, trying to do all 7,000 verses of the New Testament," notes Peterson. "Now picture today, leveraging a crowd-sourcing, Web-based platform and getting 1,000 people, 2,000, or 10,000 from a large people group in Asia, helping to do the New Testament in their heart language."

[As of October 12, the date this article was released], The Seed Company [was] still checking the project over to see if it works well enough to be replicated . . . [and was] hoping to come to a decision [that] week. [They were also] looking for another large Asian language to try this new method of translating Scripture.

You see, they know I am serious about balancing the budget in three years.

They know I will cut ONE TRILLION in spending my first year.

And they know NONE of their sacred cows are safe.

If we don’t need it or can’t afford it, it doesn’t matter what department of government we’re talking about.

Sure, the establishment will scream and holler that we need MORE money to keep our country safe.

But the simple fact is, if we had a constitutional foreign policy – and if we stopped nation-building and policing the world - our nation would be much safer and spend much LESS money at the same time.

Our troops understand that fact.

That’s why I’ve received more money from members of the military than all of my Republican opponents COMBINED.

But sadly, my establishment opponents just don’t seem to get it.

They want more spending, more government, and more debt.

You and I both know we can’t afford politics as usual any longer.

You and I both know maintaining the big spending, Big Government status quo will only lead to our nation’s ruin.

But I’m the ONE candidate who is serious about fixing our problems.

I’m the ONE candidate who will change our foreign policy to strengthen our national defense while ending these wars.

I’m the ONE candidate who will fight to end welfare to illegal immigrants AND secure our border.

And I’m the ONE candidate who will take power BACK from government, not scream to give more to it. . . .

My campaign is in crunch time right now.

As I mentioned, it’s just over five weeks until voters start going to the caucuses and polls to begin selecting the next Republican nominee for President.

In these final weeks, my campaign is launching an all-out voter contact blitz with TV ads, direct mail, and boots on the ground in both Iowa and New Hampshire.

With polls showing me statistically tied for first in Iowa and clearly in second in New Hampshire, you and I must make our big push right now.

P.S. Every one of my opponents during Tuesday night’s debate was demanding more government.

Some are even falsely claiming military spending is being cut!

But the only thing being debated in Washington, D.C. right now is how fast spending will increase!

I’m the only candidate in this race who is serious about cutting spending. And if we don’t need it or can’t afford it, it doesn’t matter what department it’s in.

Boy. The media gives everybody else and his brother coverage. Ron Paul is ignored. And yet he is really and truly in contention? What is "the story behind the story" of his being ignored? (Like the "90 seconds" story from two weeks ago.)

Monday, November 21, 2011

David Brooks offers some thought-provoking tongue-in-cheek insights in a recent New York Times essay:

Fitness inequality is acceptable. It is perfectly fine to wear tight workout sweats to show the world that pilates have given you buns of steel. These sorts of displays are welcomed as evidence of your commendable self-discipline and reproductive merit.

Moral fitness inequality is unacceptable. It is out of bounds to boast of your superior chastity, integrity, honor or honesty. Instead, one must respect the fact that we are all morally equal, though our behavior and ethical tastes may differ. . . .

Technological inequality is acceptable. If you are the sort of person who understands the latest hardware and software advances, who knows the latest apps, it is acceptable to lord your superior connoisseurship over the aged relics who do not understand these things.

Cultural inequality is unacceptable. If you are the sort of person who attends opera or enjoys Ibsen plays, it is not acceptable to believe that you have a more refined sensibility than people who like Lady Gaga, Ke$ha or graffiti. . . .

Sunday, November 20, 2011

I was looking up a word online and bumped into this video about third-person possessive pronouns--his, her, and them.

As Emily Brewster, an associate editor at Merriam-Webster notes, Facebook recently changed its software so we should no longer see those (drive-me-crazy) notices like, "Noah Webster commented on their own photo." And it's about time, too, from my perspective! After all, Facebook knows whether you are male or female.

But then Emily gets into some areas where I myself have struggled--the sentences that require a male or female pronoun if you want to be grammatically correct, but that require both the male and female pronoun if you want to be gender-sensitive (and I have bought into the importance of gender sensitivity since I was in college, at least).

The problem is, as Emily notes, one can wind up with monstrous sentences like, "Everyone should do his or her best in whatever situations in which he or she finds himself or herself." (!!!!)

Of course, there are often simple workarounds like, "People should do their best," or, "You should do your best." But not always.

And as Emily suggests, maybe "Everyone should just do their best in the situations in which they find themselves."

And the locus for such a (to my training) grammatically awkward sentence?

How about the King James Bible? 1611 edition. Matthew 18:35: "...if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses."

Yipes!

I have watched other Merriam-Webster videos over the last many years. I find them fascinating. Maybe you will, too. Check them out!

Friday, November 18, 2011

My brother replied to my "Global Revolution"/Occupy Wall Street post from yesterday by sending me a link to a hilarious and thought-provoking video of Samantha Bee of John Stewart's Daily Show as she visits Zuccotti Park to report on class division within the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

I'm editing the Landmark History of the American People by Daniel Boorstin for an elementary school age audience. I am in the midst of the section dealing with the U.S.' Declaration of Independence. I needed to check a particular phrase . . . and wound up at http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution. I have not been following Occupy Wall Street. And we don't have television, so I have never seen any of this kind of coverage before.

In the context of my American history studies and the Arab Spring revolutions, it struck me, watching the live feed: This is how governments fall. Is the U.S. next?

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Very rarely are we permitted to listen to alternative perspectives on matters of deep importance. I was reminded of that again last night when I received an email from John Tate, campaign manager for Ron Paul:

90 seconds.

That's how much of the first hour of tonight's GOP debate was given to Ron Paul. 90 measly seconds out of 3,600 seconds.

The remaining 3,510 seconds were spent with the other major candidates:

** Declaring their desire to start wars in Iran, Pakistan, and Syria;

** Rehashing their support for torture;

** Agreeing that President Obama has the right to unilaterally assassinate an American citizen without a court conviction;

** Explaining their plans to continue nation-building, policing, and occupying countries across the globe.

It literally made me sick watching the mainstream media once again silence the one sane voice in this election. The one dissenter to a decade of unchecked war. The one candidate who stands for true defense and actual constitutional government.

Ron Paul was silenced, in perhaps the most important debate of the cycle.

You have to ask yourself why.

I think I know the answer. Both parties have perpetuated the foreign policy that is bankrupting our nation and tearing apart the world.

Both parties have started wars without proper congressional authorization.

Both parties have fabricated reasons for war.

Both parties’ outrageous spending has taken us to the brink of disaster.

And if the other candidates on the stage tonight are to be believed, then there is only one candidate who would break the globalists’ stranglehold over our foreign policy, our Treasury, and the lives of our family, friends, and neighbors in the armed forces.

Ron Paul could change history. He could save our great nation from its own devastating policies of the past 10 years.

If his voice could be heard.

The media has once again BLACKED OUT Ron Paul.

But I am reminded, too, of an article I read this past summer about The Filter Bubble or "invisible sieve" that may be, sadly, slowly wrapping itself around even those of us who want to hear "the other side" and understand why people think differently than we do. As Facebook, Google, and other internet search engines and information servers come to "understand" our own predilections, they begin feeding us an ever-more-specialized subset of all the material potentially available in the world. And thus, as Eli Pariser, author of The Filter Bubble, says, they begin "indoctrinating us with our own ideas," or "autopropagandizing."

I hope not. As one commentator replied to the article I just referenced,

People already [tend to] read the newspaper that reflects their biases; TV news - especially in the USA - is entertainment almost entirely devoid of content and highly country-centric. People socialize with others who resemble them. This has been true for over a century. But . . . I can, by selecting my search terms, browse for nearly everything I want. Even if I am a life-long pacifist, typing "Hitler" into the browser search bar will return information about his life and his impact on the world. Even if I am a middle-aged white male from Arkansas, typing "Moroccan lesbian" will return something outside my normal realm of experience. And - in a more factual example - I can subscribe to the online version of Al Jazeeera, browse Le Monde (if I'm willing to pay; if not I can always find excerpts and summaries) and cast a glance at... gasp... The Economist. So basically the concern about living in a bubble seems to me to be utterly fantastical. Bubble people will always live in their bubbles.

May the rest of us continue stolidly to seek to build bridges!

. . . And now, having said all that, I thought I would call your attention to a guy who obviously thinks very differently . . . and is willing to argue his points. He goes by the name Kaz and you can find him on his website called But Now You Know.

For example, Cash for Clunkers Causes Pollution and Poverty. Of course, the post is more than two years old. Kaz wrote what he did as the program was going into effect. But it is helpful to learn from history. Our government did authorize the program. And Kaz' analysis still makes sense. Some of the faults Kaz noted:

Cash for Clunkers Pollutes

This is because the older a car, the worse its gas mileage. Not only in general, but also because cars tend to perform worse as they age.

Cash for Clunkers only rewards people for buying new cars, not for simply buying any car that got better gas mileage, regardless of its age. And it destroys the cars traded in, regardless of their own gas mileage.

This means that only more-prosperous people, who can afford new cars, are able to use the C4C program. They are, therefore, often trading in relatively nice, fuel-efficient cars. Often, they are even buying cars only a couple of miles per gallon more efficient.

Meanwhile, what about the people with older cars, which are much less fuel efficient?

Simple: They are having the nicer, more efficient used cars they WOULD have bought destroyed. Leaving them in a pollutive car longer than if the C4C never happened in the first place.

Kaz says more on the subject, but this gives the gist.

. . . and Causes Poverty

As the best-off consumers buy better things, items out of favor — whether used or just old models — become less expensive, allowing poorer people to buy progressively better stuff for the same prices.

In the case of cash for clunkers, the Obama administration broke this:

Nice used cars will now be in shorter supply, which will raise the relative prices of the remaining nice used cars.

This will make it harder for poorer people to afford to upgrade.

This will trickle all the way down to the very poorest, who will soon find that their ability to buy some minimal car AT ALL, is affected.

That can mean the difference between getting to a job, and getting out of poverty, or being trapped indefinitely.

So aside from the many other unintended consequences of this program, and there are many, the program has actually set the scene for poor people to have an even harder time affording cars, a vital tool for earning more money.

The per century cooling trend of this [15-year --JAH] period, a minus 3.7°F, took place despite the huge warmth produced by two large El Niño events during this 15-year span: 1997-1998 and 2009-2010.
For the 10-year period ending October 2011 (November 1, 2001 thru October, 2011 - 120 months), the cooling trend accelerates to a very significant minus 10.6°F per century rate - again, per the updated NOAA/NCDC temperature records.

But as Kaz notes,

Because their budgets depend on scaring people with the global warming myth, various government organizations and bureaucrats have desperately been spinning this cooling trend, even as they avoid directly mentioning it. Around 2006, there started a growing trend to refer to it as “climate change”, not global WARMING, because they wanted to re-brand it before the cooling became well-known.
Now, as the global cooling trend has continued for five years, you can actually find global warming profiteers saying as crazily anti-scientific things as “global warming will probably take a break for a while”, as if it were a tired old man, not a weather phenomenon.

He continues with a discussion of what he calls The Climate Bogeyman.

Now we’re all familiar with witch-hunt logic:
We throw the unpopular woman in the lake:

If she drowns, she was innocent.

If she floats and survives, she’s a witch and we burn her at the stake.

This kind of evil trick has been used by people seeking power through fear, for as long as recorded history.
It is one thing that Principles of Justice, and the Scientific Method, are supposed to counteract.
Sadly, this appears to be the same logic that the global warming profiteers use.
If the weather is warm, it’s proof of global warming, if it’s cold, it’s proof the weather has been disrupted by global warming.
The scientific method does not stop them, even though they are “climate scientists”, because they do not use it. They have long-ago abandoned the rules of hard science.

And then, finally,

[O]verall, global cooling is worse for humanity and civilization than global warming.
Whether by coincidence or not, many failures of civilizations and economies have appeared to hinge around sudden cooling periods. There is no corresponding evidence of warming bringing down societies.
Regardless of what the actual temperature trend is, if anything, or what actually is causing it, the motivation of people who report every year the global temperature rises, but are silent every year it falls, seems worse than suspect.
These people are no more to be trusted than a tobacco scientist, and for the same reason.

Saturday, November 05, 2011

I just subscribed to a free fun newsletter that comes out once a week. It deals with words. (You can check it out at http://www.worldwidewords.org.)

This week's letter included the following stories I thought you would enjoy:

Topical Words: Plan B
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The news in Britain in recent weeks has been full of references to the notorious Plan A of the Chancellor, George Osborne. He said last year that his scheme for improving the country's finances was the only one needed. Last December, the Treasury insisted that "There is no Plan B", which shows signs of becoming a sarcastic catchphrase. A hundred economists published an open letter in the Observer last Sunday in an attempt to change Osborne's mind, arguing that "It is now clear that plan A isn't working" and urging the government to adopt a plan B. This has been reinforced this week by similar calls from the Liberal Democrats, coalition partners in the government. Ed Balls, Osborne's Labour opposition counterpart, dismisses all such alphabetical labels: "Call it Plan A-plus. Call it Plan B. Call it Plan C. I don't care what they call it - Britain just needs a plan that works."

Observers of a logical bent might wonder, if Mr Osborne only ever expects to have a Plan A, why he bothered to assign a letter to it.
A British author had fun with this approach half a century ago:

"This is what I call 'pattern A'."
"And what is pattern B?" asked Ann Halsey.
"There won't be any pattern B."
"Then why bother with the A?"
"Preserve me from the obtuseness of women! I can call it
pattern A because I want to, can't I?"
"Of course, dear. But why do you want to?"
[The Black Cloud, by Fred Hoyle, 1959.]

To label alternatives with letters is now so fashionable as hardly to warrant much comment, even though to develop possibilities much beyond Plan C is either to suggest an over-controlling and anxious personality or strategies that contemplate extraordinary contingencies. Plan Z gets some attention, but usually as one so far down the list it can only be crackpottery. Even Plan B is more often a humorous comment on a Plan A that has proved impracticable ("we need a plan B", "time for plan B") than a serious potential alternative.

Legal documents have identified plans and drawings by letters for at least a couple of centuries. The origin of the figurative expression partly lies here, but more specifically in plans that illustrate alternative proposals for a development ("The scheme shown in Plan A for remodelling the house is more expensive than the alternative outlined in Plan B").

The Oxford English Dictionary has entries for both Plan A and Plan B which imply that they originate in the US. However, its earliest citation for Plan B - a letter sent during the Civil War in 1863 - turns out to refer to a physical plan or drawing. I have found a British example, from the Report of the proceedings of the Church Congress held in Cambridge in November 1861, where it refers to one of two proposals for a scheme to modify church taxes. The first known example of Plan A is currently from an equally improbable source - the 1867 Report of the US Commissioners to the Paris Universal Exposition of that year.

And

Sic!
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The San Francisco Chronicle reported on a court case in its issue of
31 October, Jitze Couperus tells us: "A Florida widow who died in
the 2001 anthrax mailings has reached a tentative settlement in her
lawsuit against the U.S. government according to court filings."

Numeracy rules. Fred A Roth reports that a headline on Fox News on
27 October read "FOX NEWS POLL: More than three thirds of Americans
are dissatisfied with the way the U.S. is heading." It has since
been changed. So has the one Roy Zukerman spotted on the website of
the Los Angeles Times the same day: in an article about measuring
the size of the planetoid Eris when it passed in front of a star, it
stated that "Just three telescopes, both in Chile, managed to catch
the event."

Seen by Ian Harrison on an advertising sign placed by a well-known
local supermarket in Johannesburg: "Whole chicken pieces." How would
one tell?

"The ads down the side of Gmail," wrote Sarah Borowski, "are quite
often a source of amusement, such as this one, obviously aimed at
Jake the Peg: 'Get 3 For The Price Of 2 When You Shop Online With
Hotter Shoes!'"

That last one seemed to make sense, although I couldn't figure out what the reference to “Jake the Peg” might be.

But then I think I “got it.” One doesn't buy individual shoes. What will you do with three shoes for the price of two? . . . But a guy named Jake who has a peg leg might like the offer. . . .

Finally, I did a search online and it turns out there’s a song called “Jake the Peg” about a guy who was born with an extra leg:

The day that I was born, oh boy, my father nearly died.
He couldn't get my nappies on, no matter how he tried,
'Cause I was born with an extra leg, and since that day begun,
I had to learn to stand on my own three feet,
Believe me that's no fun. . . .

I had a dreadful childhood, really,
I s'pose I shouldn't moan,
Each time they had a three legged race,
I won it on my own.
And also I got popular,
When came the time for cricket,
They used to roll my trousers up,
And use me for the wicket. . . .

I was a dreadful scholar,
I found all the lessons hard,
The only thing I knew for sure was three feet make a yard.
To count to ten I used my fingers,
If I needed more,
By getting my shoes and socks off,
I could count to twenty-four.
(Pause...count: 1 2 3 4 5....) To twenty-five! . . .

Whatever I did they said was false,
They said 'Quick march,' I did a quick waltz.
Then they shouted at me 'Put your best foot forward.'
'But which foot?' I said.
'It's very fine for you, you only got a choice of two, but me!

And then I found a hilarious presentation of the song on YouTube . . . presented by Rolf Harris who adapted it from a Dutch song about "Ben van der Steen" (Ben of the Stone).

Friday, November 04, 2011

Sorry. This video includes a few ideas that are worthy of a PG-13 rating (two that show from 0:58-1:04 and two more from about 2:08-2:16). But the overall creativity, I think, is worth the price of admission.

The concept: How can you illustrate a word using the letters that spell the word in English?

A few words require some pretty fancy manipulation. But most of them don't. Honestly, I don't understand why the author/artist flipped the one letter in "Van Gogh," for example. But see what you think:

My favorites include some of the early ones: Elevator and Horizon, for example. What are yours?